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I especially find interesting the personal-development, or self-help section.

I feel a little odd leaving the library with an entire bag of checked out self-help books. I’m okay!!! I just like to read!!

But there’s no reason to not keep trying to make life better even if one isn’t wallowing in despair 🙂

I’d like to share my thoughts on two similar books about happiness I’ve read.

The first, “Happy for no Reason”, I read several months back, perhaps a year ago. The second I just finished getting through last night.

I always take notes when I read books. It helps me remember the advice the books give and helps me learn a bit more about writing and literature – two things I’m very interested in :0)

Happy for No Reason beholds the real, easily explained key to happiness. Honestly, just reading that book can make a person happier. Many books seem to have this power, just because they are full of wonderous magical stories, but this one even explains how to stay happy after you put it down.

Many people get happy after something great happens to them, like winning the lottery, or getting a perfect mark on an exam, or getting a promotion at work…

But those are all things that aren’t so much under our control. What if you could put yourself in a happy state of mind, where no matter what happens to you you can be happy – you bring your happiness with you everywhere you go?

It’s the sort of thing that can turn lemons into lemon cake instead of plain old lemonade 🙂

The second book (which I just finished reading yesterday) is called “Choosing Brilliant Health”. This is a book with a similar goal, but it also includes a health-related take on happiness and how to achieve both (good health and good happiness) interrelatedly.

Both books have stories of happy people from around the world, things that happened to them, how they achieved ultimate happiness, and how they learned to stay happy despite unfortunate events. The difference here is that in Choosing Brilliant Health the stories are often related to health issues or overcoming health problems, and they are integrated into the general writing, whereas in Happy For No Reason the stories of happiness are more generalized and they are separated from the author’s thoughts/general flow of the book with sections and dividers.

This doesn’t cause much difference in the books, other than a slight smoother flow in Choosing Brilliant Health thanks to the mixing of the book’s outline – it helps tie the whole thing together and connect the points made in it. It also gives it a more plot-like development; it’s important to read the beginning before you read the end (but this holds true for any book, basically). In Happy For No Reason, you get the clear distinction between stories and can then apply the knowledge from what the book is talking about, in order to analyze those stories and find a way to use the knowledge they describe.

Both books also include the author’s/authors’ story while they were writing that book; whether it was giving seminars on happiness or travelling the world interviewing happy people. Many self-growth books have this component and I really think it increases the motivational power the books bring: it lets you get to know the authors in a more personal way and makes you listen to them more, as you feel like ou have a closer connection to them. They also use their little anecdotes to help readers feel like they are a part of the team, which is more inspiring to do the activities and exercises both books have.

I found it really helpful that in Happy For No Reason, the author included little overviews of the points covered in each chapter. It helps the readers remember the information they learned about and retain it.

Choosing Brilliant Health didn’t have this feature but it is written in a different style; if I should get really analytical, then Happy For No Reason is more hands-on, “let’s do this work to help you be happier” while Choosing Brilliant health more resembles a story that you can learn from with more liberty as to what information you pick out.

So, which book is better for you depends on how you prefer to learn; be presented a story and pick out what’s important to you, or be presented information and be told more directly what to do. However I recommend reading both books to anyone who is interested in this area. They give slightly different angles and both have very useful information, which can provide readers with a more thorough knowledge of the wisdom they contain :0)